The Peruvian "Alien Skull"

If you’ve surfed the web at all in the last day or two you have probably heard about this “discovery.” One piece I saw on Yahoo News described the skeletal remains in the picture below as those of a “giant-headed mummy” with a “triangular skull.” It must be alien — right?

At first glance, the “giant-headed” description may cause readers to zip right past the fact that the specimen is twenty INCHES long. Here is another picture you likely won’t see on the archaeo-porn websites seeking to derive up their hit traffic. It puts things into perspective.

The specimen is most likely an infant whose head was wrapped to achieve the shape, as I have blogged about before (and lots of infants have misshapen heads without wrapping anyway). This is the opinion of the discoverer, at any rate (if it really is a discovery, as opposed to a hoax). But that of course doesn’t deter audience-seeking web journalists from using words like “alien” and “extraterrestrial.” But iust couldn’t be the result of head-wrapping, known to have been practiced over nine millennia, including in Peru.

Otherwise, is it just me, or are several of the teeth in the skull a different color? And maybe it’s my imagination that the jaw is also out of proportion. I’m sure there’s no hoaxing involved. I’m also sure the Colts will be in the play-offs this year.

At any rate, at least one report I read noted that there appears to be the remains of an eyeball in the right eye socket (pardon me while I ignore the fact that if this is ancient that shouldn’t be there). But if by some material this non-bone material survived all this time, that would be prime DNA testing material. We can all wait now for the “oh, if only we had the funding [and please help us with that]” lamentations that will likely follow (either that or “the scientific community won’t allow us to test it”). My money is on this turning out to be another in the long line of “finds” that do nothing but perpetuate the cherished mythology.